Articles
CONTROL OF PLANT GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Molecular and genetic techniques can help to improve the yield.
These techniques often deal with insertion of selected genes in order to improve metabolic pathways involved in growth and development and also to select for resistance to pathogens or stress.
In practice, environmental factors can not be manipulated at low cost whereas changes in the nutritional conditions and/or in the culture substrate composition and texture could be done with reasonable cost.
In order to give way to i) a good selection of molecular and genetic strategies to be conducted for plant improvment as well as to ii) appropriate supply of exogenous compounds to be made, basic understanding of mechanisms which govern plant growth and differentiation is needed.
We conduct this investigation on a model system, the tobacco Thin Cell Layer on which differentiation of all plant patterns can be programmed separetly and rapidly (Tran Thanh Van, 1973 a and b; Tran Thanh Van, 1981; Tran Thanh Van and al., 1990; Tran Thanh Van K., 1991).
This control morphogenesis substitutes the current lack of mutants in development and allow to decipherc, amony a complex network of correlation specific markers of organs differentiation and development.